The Championship Path Clears For DePaul

JOHN ALTAVILLAThe Hartford Courant

DePaul's Big East women's basketball title was a first

No program in the Big East Conference seemed to benefit more from the departure of Notre Dame and UConn before last season than DePaul. After finishing the previous two conference seasons at 9-7, and being eliminated in the conference tournament semifinals by Notre Dame (2012) and UConn (2013), the Blue Devils soared to the top last year. They won 15 of 18 regular-season games in the Big East before defeating St. John’s to win the championship. Once that was done, DePaul defeated Oklahoma and Duke in the first two rounds of the 2014 NCAA Tournament before Texas A&M eliminated it in regional semifinal in Lincoln, Neb. The Huskies then defeated the Aggies in the Elite 8 to advance to the Final Four. But DePaul coach Doug Bruno doesn’t look at it quite that way. “I never believed that you had to win the old Big East to validate yourself,” Bruno said. “It was one of those situations where we worked very hard to win it, we attempted to win, it, we wanted to win it, but the realization that the Final Four in the Big East tournament often was a large portion of the national Final Four [UConn, Notre Dame and Louisville] gave you a tremendous amount to play for. “What people don’t realize now is how good the reconfigured Big East is. I mean, you take UConn and recent Notre Dame out of it, at least the program as it has been since the arrival of Skylar Diggins and Kayla McBride, and we totally competed with, and won a lot of games, against Louisville and Rutgers during those years. “When we were living it [the great era of the Big East], I never felt that we were the stepchildren of the conference.” Before Friday’s game with UConn at the Webster Bank Arena, the Blue Devils were ranked No. 25 and would have likely been a top 10 team had it been able to pull out hard-fought defeats to Northwestern, Texas A&M and Notre Dame. “Basically every year, your program writes and directs its own movie with new actors and actresses,” Bruno said. “And it’s going to play itself out over a 22-week journey, if you get to the Final Four. That’s a big part of what coaching is all about. You can’t let a couple of tough losses injure your program. You have to bounce back.”